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“I’m going to have to,” he said, hissing out a long breath as he took one step and then another, unsteady on his feet.

She moved forward, pulling his arm over her shoulder on his uninjured side, feeling his weight as he leaned into her.

They hadn’t made it more than a dozen steps when the crack of a branch and a sudden rush of footsteps brought them both up short. Fox jerked away from Sofia, moving into a fighting stance even as he swayed on his feet. And they turned to face the dark forest, as a half-dozen figures melted out of the shadows.

CHAPTERTWENTY-SEVEN

FOX

One of the figures stepped forward, the apparent leader of the group. His black hair was long and hung in braids. He wore a dress-like tunic in a style that Fox had never seen before, wide trousers visible underneath. It was a surprisingly clean shade of cream that contrasted with his dark skin.

When he spoke, it took a moment for Fox to realize he wasn’t speaking the king’s tongue. The words were more guttural and clipped, and he thought he vaguely recognized them from some of the poorest sides of the city.

Sofia stepped forward, hands raised. She responded in kind, her own words hesitant and awkward, but Fox saw the faces of the others soften. They understood her enough, apparently.

The group turned to him, speaking once more. Their words were just as indecipherable as before. Fox looked at Sofia with wide eyes, entreating her.

She spoke again, this time waving at him as she did so. He could understand enough from the body language that some of their group weren’t thrilled to see either of them here.

It was an uncomfortable feeling not being able to understand what was being said, but knowing it was about you. Dragon-tongue, while relatively common in the worst of the slums wasn’t something you heard wandering around the military or royal quarters. No one outside of the poorest Dragonborn spoke the dying language, too afraid of being seen as disloyal to the king.

“What are they saying?” he said, uneasy with how long he’d let the conversation go on without him.

“They’re asking about what we’re doing out here. I think.”

“Do you speak dragon-tongue?”

“I learned it from books and alley brawls, so I can’t say it’s perfect.”

He wanted to comment on the strange combination of her education, but before he could, a woman stepped forward from the back of the group. The moons’ light caught in her hair, and Fox saw the silver strands that marked her age better than her smooth skin.

“Your dragon-tongue is admirable,” she said in perfectly articulate king’s tongue. Fox felt unsettled as her piercing black eyes focused on him. “My name is Clarita. You say you’re lost. How did you come this far?”

Sofia answered first. “We were kidnapped by wolfshifters and weren’t able to escape immediately. We’ve been trying to make it back to m—our base the last few days.”

“You are with the resistance?” Clarita said, eyeing Fox carefully.

“Yes,” Sofia said.

“We do not align ourselves with the people of Suvi.”

“I know,” Sofia said, voice softening in a way she never had with him. This is what it sounded like when she cared what someone thought of her. “We’re just passing through trying to get back to our people. We’ve run into…obstacles.”

The woman’s eyes narrowed at this, eyes sweeping over them both and then the gleam of freshly fallen rain in the undergrowth.

“What did you see? The earthquake—was it just an earthquake?”

Sofia and Fox exchanged a look, neither of them knowing what the woman wanted to hear. The rules in Suvi were easy enough to remember: don’t talk of dragons or faeries. But out here?

Sofia made the decision for them. “We saw a dragon.”

She didn’t elaborate, waiting for their reactions.

“You are mistaken.”

Sofia’s face hardened into something more familiar to Fox. “No, we’re not. I gave a prayer last night, and this evening, a dragon came through the river down there. I know what I saw.”

Clarita seemingly repeated Sofia’s words in dragon-tongue and murmuring broke out among the others. A few spit out words sharp enough that Fox didn’t want Clarita’s translation. She gave it nonetheless.